Antidote
by Kiiro Pond
Summary: We track the stories of the tributes, the Gamemakers, and those who were left behind in the 32nd annual Hunger Games as they struggle to survive the thoughts that plague them. The odds will slip through their fingers, and even those who survive cannot make it out alive.
1. Introducing the Apprentices

Chapter One: The Gamemakers Can't Remember What the Apprentices Do

They don't seem to be able to remember what they themselves do, either.

…..

"That kid's been working hard," says Icarus.

Viva shakes her head, strands of multicolored hair clinging to the creases of her face. "I think he needs monitoring. Look at his eyes."

Radia's eyes have a glazed-over quality. They look up, dwarfed by the bags that have formed beneath them over the last few days. There's something unsettling about them, but he presses his lips tightly together and turns back to his work, and Nerva can't place a finger on what it is.

"Still, he's the best techie we have," Icarus insists. He places a hand on Radia's shoulder. "Any progress?"

Radia flinches, shying away from the Gamemaker. The panicked look on his face is reminiscent of the faces of tributes from Hunger Games past, when they're terrified, but still fighting. He stutters. "I…I've scanned the arena for weak spots."

That's Nerva's task. He pulls the headset off, flips through the files on his computer and pulls up a list.

"The Cornucopia," Nerva cuts in, attempting to speak professionally. "It's a major pressure point, if hit from the side. It could trigger a domino effect which could bring the whole Arena down." He struggles to keep his voice calm.

An array of unpleasant words comes through the receiver of the headset slung over the corner of Nerva's computer. He eyes it reproachfully, and turns the volume down.

He has their attention. Radia meets his eyes with a peculiar expression. Pulling up the simulator, Nerva fiddles with the button panel. An image pops up on the screen. A smooth dome, partially protruding from the ground, in the center of a labyrinth of open-air tunnels. "The pressure point is along the seams." The image zooms in to show where the tunnel walls meld with the metal structure of the dome. Nerva taps in a code. The image begins to move again, showing a movie little more than a blueprint. Nothing happens on the outside, but the structure within the pressure point begins to cave in, breaking the supports running through the labyrinth, which hit other pressure points.

Viva and Icarus watch with critical gazes. Face flushing, Nerva looks to Radia for approval. But Radia's eyes are downcast, a frown plastered to his face. Nerva's spirits sink. Radia is used to doing all the work, he thinks.

Icarus scratches his head. "It certainly wasn't built this way, Viva."

Viva, one of the overseers, examines the picture. "No. This is new."

"Yes, ma'am." Nerva says. "Well, it…." Now he's the one stuttering. Radia's eyes burn holes through his mind. "It only showed up yesterday."

"Ma'am," Viva adds. Icarus lays a hand on her arm, and she growls. "Get off."

They head off, away from the two apprentices. Radia doesn't stop staring.

"Look, that was my mission. Whatever you're upset about, tough luck. Get over it." Nerva closes the image. Quickly he pulls up a scan of the last people to modify the arena in any way, both the ones in the control center, and the ones working on the field.

"Don't you have some—something you should be doing?"

"Oh." Nerva does. He picks up the headset, adjusting it clumsily over his head. It's too big; every headset is.

"Mister Feathersnap, sir. This is your apprentice Nerva."

Nothing. Nerva finds on his computer the live streaming of Pan's work in the arena, the one he was told to watch and learn from. Pan's lips move, but still, silence from the headset.

"It's muted," Radia deadpans.

Nerva clenches his jaw and shoots a glare at Radia. He flips the volume up, and is immediately greeted by a string of unimaginative curse words. Nerva yanks the earphones away from his ears. "Yes, Pan, I'm here. I can hear you now."

"Good riddance," Pan growls.

Nerva bits his lip and doesn't say anything. "Have you heard about the pressure point?" he asks. "Sir."

"No, and I sure don't have time to. There's something you'd better see, being an apprentice and all."

"I could fix it. Sir," says Nerva.

Pan laughs, low and soft, completely incredulous. "Apprentices don't do work like that, got it? Leave it to the masters."

And there's no chance Nerva can fix a pressure point.

A small click comes from his computer, a flat note, accompanied by a blinking orange light. But he can't look at the screen, check the lists for someone he's sure he'll find, a number or a name to confirm his suspicions. He can't find evidence. Pan's static voice in his ears requires all his concentration.

Radia uses the distraction to hack into the central computer system. It's much easier than hacking into the entire Capitol network.

Nerva, he thinks, thwarting all his attempts. Nerva, trying to pin him to a wall like a fly. But Radia will not go down. He's familiar with the hum of computers, with the strings of numbers that make his eyes water. And he's familiar with long, patient endeavors, step by step.

The glazed quality leaves Radia's eyes. Slowly, glancing at Nerva out of the corners of his eyes, he tilts his screen away from Nerva. The fluorescent overhead lights cast him aglow, illuminating him from the twitching of his fingertips to the irregular rise and fall of his chest. There can be no secrets in the Gamemaker control centers.

Radia's movements, too, grow irregular. He holds his lethargic fingers above the keyboard. The password he needs is familiar to him. Far too familiar.

Radia sighs. He pulls his hands away from the keyboard. A tap of a key and the screen before him ceases it's blinking _'password_.'

"Nerva?" Radia says.

Nerva holds up a finger. "I'll have time later."

But Radia sees Nerva's hand scrolling the mouse around. He sees the blinking orange of the list on the toolbar.

So while Nerva, again pulling the headset away from his throbbing ears, uses one hand to pull up his list, Radia begins to delete all evidence.

Number 516. Delete. Number 516. Delete. Radia's number is there no more than three times now. Two times. One. He could have used the central network. Zero.

Right before Nerva's eyes, the numbers vanish from the screen. Delete, delete.

The screens mean nothing to Nerva, omnipresent machines with no evidence. In one flourishing movement, he clears the day's memory.

And Radia's eyes are glazed again.

...

A couple of things: Firstly, this is the restarted version of Antidote, which was an SYOT. It no longer is one. However, I kept a quite a few of the characters.  
>Secondly, I am not technologically savvy. That's why the whole deal with Radia and Nerva using technology seems chunky. Please, if you know anything more about technology than I do, flame andor give constructive criticism on what I did wrong and, if possible, how I can fix it.  
>I'm going to try to do what Wingbeats is doing and update every Friday, even it it means staying up till 11.59 on Friday night finishing and uploading each chapter.<p> 


	2. Introducing District Three

Chapter Two: Echlyss Is Three Years Older Than He's Supposed To Be

But his back story didn't make sense when he was sixteen, either

...

The escort wears misery. Echlyss Tictervelk can see it in the way she keeps her eyes cast downward toward the little ones roped off right before the stage. She was pretty once, four years ago when Echlyss was fifteen. She was no older than twenty; her smiles were genuine, and she moved with a confidence that always made Echlyss think of his brother.

Now, the brunette roots of her hair are growing out above the pink and blue dye she's worn for so long. The scowl lines on her face don't let her smile, and her painted nails are jagged and wider than they are tall. Even her accent has lost some of its spunk.

"Ladies and gentlemen of District Three," she begins. Her voice is loud enough to command that they listen, but not lively enough to command that they care.

The sky is overcast, not quite storm clouds, but dark enough to threaten rain. Standing in the middle of the crowd, Echlyss is shivering. He repeats to himself, _I'm not cold_, but the tricks that sway the simple ways Zoranne thinks don't mean anything to Echlyss when the wind and the escort's sagging accent sap all his concentration.

The escort reaches her hand into the girl's reaping ball. She makes no show of it, just quickly plucks the slip off the top. "The female tribute for the thirty-second annual Hunger Games is Luna Eliott."

Luna, casting dark glances at the sky and none at the escort, ducks under the rope and staggers across the square to the stage. A slight figure, she has barely enough body mass to keep her balance against the pull of the wind.

The wind surges.

"Citizens of District Three, I present to you Luna Eliott," the escort announces, raising her voice. "Are there any volunteers?"

As the wind quiets, the sound of loud hiccups reaches Echlyss's ears. In the area roped off for the sixteen-year-olds, a boy with soft cheekbones and a wide, flat nose like Luna's stands against the rope, facing the stage, nose running and shoulders shaking. Zoranne Perpetua stands beside the boy, a hand on his shoulder. Zoranne's gaze is fixed on the boy.

Wouldn't it be ironic, Echlyss thinks, if that boy were reaped, this year or some year in the future. Would anyone volunteer for him?

And if Zoranne went into the Games, or his brother, Etora, would Echlyss break down like this boy?

The escort's teeth are chattering when she speaks. "And the male tribute is Etora Tictervelk."

Somewhere through the crowd, Echlyss sees Etora climb the steps onto the stage. He keeps his back to the District, but he holds himself high. He's shaking. Fear, the District thinks. Sobs, maybe. Shock. Zoranne is screaming somewhere, cursing the Capitol, the world, Etora, holding the ropes so tightly that his nails dig into his skin and his knuckles turn white.

"And there don't happen to be any volunteers this year, right?"

The wind stings Echlyss's eyes. He blinks prompting tears, so he keeps his eyes open. They're wild eyes, hopeless, cynical. His legs to numb, and he sinks to the ground, landing in an ungainly heap on the cobblestones of the square.

Above him, the sky rumbles. Zoranne is still screaming, he thinks. But all he feels are the raindrops landing on his head and the backs of his hands.

It's like this every year. The escort turns from the district and places her hands on the tributes' backs. She steers them across the stage to the doors of the Justice Building.

The rough stone and elaborate architecture of the Justice Building stands in stark contrast with the other buildings around the square, and in the rest of the district, built for effectiveness rather than aesthetics. The escort opens the doors, nudges the tributes forward, and the doors swing shut behind

...

The apprentices share a flat, Felix Mausica and twins Nerva and Radia Ravencroft. When they come home, Felix is passed out on the couch, snoring loudly, a bedraggled book lying open against a leg of the coffee table. His thick ginger hair falls across his face and the arm of the couch, one particularly matted clump coated in a creamy substance that might be peanut butter. Radia makes straight for the plush chair, flopping upon it in an undignified manner. His dark eyes follow Nerva's movements across the room. They have always had their share of secrets.

The world outside is already beginning to take on the slightly two dimensional quality it has as the neon buildings rise to greet the sun. Nerva stands by the huge window that spans the majority of the east wall and pushes the dinosaur patterned curtains to the side. Radia yawns.

"You know," Nerva murmurs, "I've about had it with being a Gamemaker."

"Gamemaker apprentice," Radia corrects.

"Gee, thanks."

A silence falls over them, broken only by the occasional snore. In the quiet, the strained notes of Felix's music humming almost inaudibly in the background grow louder. Nerva begins to nod his head to the music, slightly off beat. The sun falls below the candy coloured buildings around them, casting them all in a shade of blue. Radia keeps his eyes on Nerva.

"I like it here much better than back home," Radia says finally.

Nerva turns to face him. "Least at home, if we slipped up, they couldn't do much but keep us away from the operations."

A long time passes before Radia responds. "At least here, they don't monitor everything we do. They don't set expectations for us here. Look at the people here; not the Gamemakers, the citizens. They can do anything they please."

"Thirteen wasn't good enough?" There's something peculiar in Nerva's voice, something almost too harsh entirely. Radia breathes in shakily, and presses his lips together.

Felix begins to stir. He attempts to sit up, rubbing his eyes and afterward, blinking over and over again, adjusting his eyes to the world. The lights of the city have begun to turn on.

Felix jumps up, banging his knee on the coffee table. He grimaces. "Oh, man. What time is it?"

"About seven twenty," Nerva says.

Felix doesn't wait for him to finish. "What's for dinner? I'm going to be late."

"Beans," calls Radia.

"Beans _again_?" Felix presses his hands to his temples. He runs them around his head and through his hair. His face falls. "Oh, shoot! Fine, I'll take the beans, I just have to get this peanut butter out of my hair." Clumsily, he turns and hobbles to the kitchen sink, where he proceeds to turn on the water and repeatedly dunk his head in it.

Pulling the dinosaur curtains across the window, Nerva shoots a look at Radia. "Your idea. You can get the beans."

Radia's eyes are half-closed. "The fridge works."

There's still a wad of peanut butter stuck to Felix's dripping hair when Nerva puts a plate of beans on the counter beside him. Felix gobbles them up, making faces with each swallow. Pushing the plate aside, he stands in the same rushed manner. Still hobbling, he grabs a jacket from the rack beside the door on his way out. Nerva can see him using it to dry his hair before the door shuts.

Radia's head lulls to the side, his mouth parted, eyes closed, the rise and fall of his chest for once steady. Nerva retrieves Felix's book. He straightens the pages and begins to read from where Felix left off.

But it isn't long before he, too, lets the book fall and slips out of consciousness, where his dreams speak nothing of blue skies and flushed faces hiding harsh words and control rooms he always viewed from the outside.

...

Author's Note: I'm posting this without Celystia's okay. Echlyss was originally 16, as was Zoranne, and they were two years older than 14-year-old Etora. Mostly because I forgot about his character form, but also because I didn't want to write from the point of view of someone who was eligible for being reaped, Echlyss somehow ended up as 19. Celystia, if you read this and decide that him being nineteen simply won't work, I'll change it; yes, I know he's three years older than Zoranne. I'm thinking I should fix that; it doesn't work too well. Either way, Friday deadline, and for the sake of the first draft, I'm going to let it slide.


	3. Introducing District Eight

Chapter Three: History Has A Habit Of Repeating Itself, Doesn't It?

…..

The rain is interspersed with strikes of lightning, far enough away to tease them with security, but close enough that J Roanoke's skin tingles with the possibilities. He spent the whole night awake, watching the storm through the cracked glass of his kitchen window. He was awake when the streetlamps went dark, and the clock in his bedroom stopped at three seventeen.

Something is going to happen, he's sure. Something exciting. And he's not going to miss it.

From his perch on the stone counter top, J can feel every clap of thunder. They shake the building and send vibrations through the stone and through J.

The candle he lit at four burns down. The flame flickers, casting his distorted shadow against the wall. The glare against the glass turns the window into a mirror, only penetrated by the brightness of the lightning. The candle is down to its last inch. There's a strange sort of silence about the sharp way the downpour hits the pavement and stone roofs beyond the windows.

So J begins to hum. Quiet and off-tune at first, but even as he goes along, it seems garishly out of place. The national anthem.

And it's in this manner, black eyes scanning the edge of the light warily, humming much more immediate than the thunderstorm outside, that J misses the lightning strike the factory.

The flames spring up immediately, their voice is different from the rhythmic tapping of the rain. Still, the steadfast persistence is the same. It holds its own against the rain, spreading through the cloth kept locked up in storage, waiting for the daybreak when the Peacekeepers will wake up and ship it off by train or hovercraft to the Capitol.

J would have been with them by that point. That, or dead, the way Grako put it. And Fred trailed his feet on the asphalt and said nothing.

The next day, J hears by word of mouth that it isn't a factory that caught fire. It's an apartment building, one of the tallest on the southern side of District Eight's main city. Address number 496. The number is familiar to J.

He takes the long way home from the factory that day, all the way down to the southern part of the city. After approximately forty minutes of walking, three dead-ends, and very numb feet, he finds it.

The fire was constrained. Address number 496 stands surrounded by buildings charred and sagging inward, but they have nothing on 496 itself. The support columns still stand maybe fifty feet in the air, but they're skyscrapers among the rubble of furniture, architecture, and precious mementos, a cityscape in its own right. There's a scrap book a ways up, wedged between a column and a charred wall with damp, off-yellow insulation tumbling to the ground in chunks.

And there's a feeling about it, the chocolate brown of the wood and the scrapbook he doesn't remember, of the city's watching eyes behind him, where he won't ever look. They made a scrapbook together, him and Grako and Fred; filled it with scraps they found on the floors of the factory, when Grako would crouch when the Peacekeepers and overseers weren't looking and explore the building from ground level. Beneath the machines. Out of sight.

This building, it has no eyes. Even the rats that haunt every building in the city are gone, or fleeing. The last few stragglers crawl, limping, from the midst of the ruins and scamper across the stone of the road.

Yes, there's a feeling about this building. There's a feeling of _déjà vu_.

And J must annihilate it.

The place is surrounded by Peacekeepers, their uniforms, their pistols, and more importantly, their hardened faces, just a few more of thee things that J will never have. They watch him as he approaches the building, shifting in place. They have orders to keep the citizens away, but J has a face that looks of destruction.

"Young man," one of them says at last. J shoots him a look that speaks only of things ending. He runs a hand along a stone column, but it brings back no memories.

Later that day, he goes past the community home on his way to the home of a friend who knows the city better than the backs of her eyelids. Fred spots J from the balcony. His eyes take on a guarded look. As J's footsteps ring dully against the rough stone, Fred turns and heads inside, slamming the balcony door behind him. He pulls a fragment of stone from his pocket, smooth from hours of labor, but, regardless, it barely resembles the key it was meant to be.

Fred struggles with the key in the lock. Jamming it with all his force against the keyhole, the stone much wider than the opening. So hard the tip of the stone breaks off, and tumbles to the floor. But Fred hears a click in the lock, so he pockets the key. He takes care to step on the fragment of stone, pushing it with the tip of his shoe into the crack under the door.

He descends a damp staircase to the brooding second floor corridor. The small tinted window at the end lets colored light in, but somehow it only adds to the melancholy about the whole place. His room is at the end, on the left. The corner of the building, one of the few rooms lucky enough to get two windows.

He sags onto a bed old enough to be antique. Delicate patterns on the bedspread, whining springs beneath a yellowing mattress, a shaky look about the dark brown wood of the frame. The door swings back, leaving an opening half a foot wide.

A year ago, Fred painted his room yellow. It was much better than the grey that made up the rest of the buildings. He used the bright dye he found in the factories. He took it when the overseers weren't looking, a trick Grako had used often, just to see if he could do it. Still, it was a pale color, for textile dye didn't cling to the stone the way paint would, and the most it could do was tint the melancholy with a faint wash of lightness.

And Fred doesn't look out the windows. He leans back on the bed, legs dangling over the edge, and closes his eyes. The protruding pattern of the stitching on the bedspread keeps the room immediate, and he focuses on that.

He will not look out the window. He will not look for address number 496. He will not replace his memories of the brightest building in the city with images of destruction. For along with the key and the old book his friend found for him in the ruins of the city beyond the district fences, those memories are the only thing Fred has left of his best friend. They're the only thing he has left of Grako.

…..

The electric fences don't hum when J passes by them. He stops by the hole Grako made two years ago, the ones the officials haven't fixed yet. The barbs on the fence wire were enough to keep anyone away, electricity or not, before that. But Grako just flounced out with pliers far too large for his hand and a pair of rubber gloves he had taken from the supply closet at work. J and the others stared, eyes as large as soup spoons, while he crouched beside the fence and set to unwinding the coils of the wire.

He was gone for two weeks. And when he came back, staggering up the railroad, through the hole in the fence, legs giving way and collapsing in a heap against the stone warehouse walls, his eyes were a brighter green than they had ever been. The blank quality that was always hidden behind them was much more apparent.

He was different after that. He didn't see J when he looked, if he looked; the words he spoke had no basis in logic.

And the hole he made in the fence remained.

For a brief moment, the thought of fleeing, of just slipping through that hole, of crossing the railroad tracks, of going on and on into the unknown, forging his own life there. He's never going into the Games, not now that he's nineteen.

And he's never going to be a Peacekeeper.

It was always those two options, since he was younger than Grako when he went down the railroads. He was going to go into the Hunger Games. Win or lose, he was going to do it. But year after year, those two words, "I volunteer," they always died on his tongue, lost in a silence so oppressive he wouldn't be heard even if he shouted.

But last year was his last year. "This is it," he told Grako. Grako, his green eyes fixed on J's own and never seeing them, cracked a smile. "This is really, truly it. If I don't get in this year, I guess I'm going to be a Peacekeeper." But he said it with eyes that scanned the room for an escape route, his hand on Grako's shoulder. To Grako, it was hardly there at all.

But there's nothing stopping him now, no dream he still has a chance to accomplish. And certainly not Grako.

J remembers the reaping day on year ago, the sweat on his palms, his eyes watering from staring for so long at the escort, never blinking once. He remembers the words forming on the tip of his tongue, "I volunteer." He began to raise his voice, not three seconds after the escort had pulled the name out of the boy's ball.

"I volun—"

That time, they didn't die quietly. They were completely annihilated. Because at that moment, J's mind processed the name the escort had read.

Fred Johnson.

He remembers his mind, as blank as Grako's eyes. And it was; all he could do was gape at the escort. All he could do was watch through the windows between the figures of the people in front of him as Fred lifted the rope barrier to climb to the stage.

And there was Grako, one hand on Fred's chest, pushing him back. A sharp intake of breath followed as Grako sprang up onto the stage instead, using only the ropes as support.

So that was it. J never saw Grako again. Not the real Grako, just a poor, incompetent boy dragged around by another, one whose golden-brown eyes looked nothing short of manic.

And J finds himself on the other side of the fence, staring across the tracks, his feet practically on the edges of the wooden cross beams. There's nothing beyond the tracks, nothing but a ragged hill scattered with crumbling red rocks and objects that look like large, crooked needles. But beyond that, J sees clumps of strange green material. The taller ones stand atop thick brown poles.

He sets his gaze on the hill beyond the train tracks. Without looking back, eyes widening and breath catching on his tongue. And J steps out onto the railroad.

…..

Author's Note: I'm rereading the Hunger Games (first book, fourth time I'm reading it), and I've realized how much about the world I've gotten wrong. I think, though, that I'll be able to do it right from now on. Anyway, what do you think of me writing someone's story of life during the downfall of North America, but before the rise of Panem? The floods, the droughts, the fires, the storms, the wars… yeah. It sounds interesting enough to me. I also figure there would be ruins from the cities of North America pre-Panem. Anyway, I've got a Harry Potter fanfic to write.


	4. Involving Fireflies

Chapter Four: Involving Fireflies

Wingbeats, in your honor, I present Headlamp

…..

Radia's dream involved computer codes made of numbers that didn't exist. Strings of fifteen all interconnected, looping across the screens in the shapes of birds and high-rise buildings and the fireflies he sometimes saw when he snuck outside with Zephyr back home. When it was summer, and he squinted through the haze brought by the dim light and the warm air, and the only snow he could see slept on the mountaintops far, far away. He stood, star struck, gazing at the little glowing bugs, a thousand times more magnificent than any tinted nightlight back inside.

"Wouldn't it be wonderful to catch one?" he asked Zephyr. "I could bring her back inside with me." The world would never leave him, then, if the firefly sat on his dresser and lit up the solitude for him.

But Zephyr stood closer to the door underground, away from the gates and the woods and the fireflies that brought the only genuine smiles to Radia's face.

The found him regardless. They fluttered around the edges of Zephyr's vision, close enough that he could touch them with his fingertips. But they belonged to Radia, like all else, so he kept his arms crossed and watched Radia step slowly in circles.

In the midst of the fireflies, the sky grew darker and the haze gave way to a lethargic clarity. Just beyond the fence, the silhouettes of the forest loomed, and Radia wondered what was out there. Another twelve districts where the people lived above ground. Where they saw fireflies every night and took them for granted. A ruling Captiol which facilitated an annual children's killing. It all seemed so beautiful. But Radia's skin tingled with a chill in the air, and the Capitol no longer mattered, because Radia felt alive.

"You always refer to them as female," Zephyr said. Radia turned to look at him, but neither could see the other's face in the darkness, only the occasional glint of the whites of their eyes as a firefly passed.

"Yes." Radia sighed. "But Headlamp says they're all male."

Zephyr chuckled. Radia loved his chuckles; they brought yet another smile to the corners of his mouth.

Headlamp was sort of the butt of all jokes among the middle schoolers. He had all the stories, though. Headlamp claimed that he had been born while his mother was fleeing District Two, one of the wealthiest districts. His mother, the story went, carried him for miles upon miles. North, where every step was conscious labor, over snowy mountains stretching miles into the air, across tundra of nothing but ice, where the only thing keeping Headlamp alive was his mother's faltering body heat. He amended later that no matter how hard she searched, she couldn't find Thirteen.

No one believed him. Still, Headlamp's story had some basis in fact. Six years ago, when barely an inch of snow fell within Radia's line of vision from the above ground windows, but there were blizzards on the mountains, across the valleys to the tundra. That's where Headlamp came from, trailing mud and puddles the size of oceans across the smooth, spotless floors, until the chill, stale air of the underground dried the water off his body and left him shivering. He didn't come in through the gates, he didn't pass the sentries. He was just there one day, and no one questioned him for months afterward.

And Headlamp never cared much for fireflies.

Zephyr just watched Radia bend to take his shoes off. The grass pricked Radia's feet like the spinning wheels he couldn't touch until after his sixteenth birthday, because that's what it said in the fairytales.

They fell into patterns before his eyes, the fireflies. Two close enough that he could touch them. Eight circling him, just out of reach, far enough away he could barely make out their bodies. Another eight closer to the forest, closer to the fence. Eighteen peeking out at him from among the trees.

Radia's mind was buzzing, but the patterns found their way inside them. He turned back to Zephyr. But as he watched, Zephyr reached out an arm and his fingers closed around a firefly.  
>…..<p>

So Radia lies awake, listening to the faltering hum of the appliances in the kitchen beyond his bedroom and the steady flowing of the water through the pipes in the ceiling. The lights he can see through the large window look like fireflies. He flicks on the nightlight. A red-tinted glow pulses through the room.

There are patterns to the city, numbers he can calculate in three seconds, hands down. But the city rises hundreds of feet, and the only grass Radia finds feels like plastic.

There is nothing but patterns. Every day he types in calculated key words, brings up paragraph upon paragraph of words that taste of sand on his tongue. Zephyr does the building. Zephyr tracks Pan in the arena, sees first-hand how everything works.

Radia pushes the tears away with the palm of his hand. By order of elimination, districts Six, Seven, and Eight would be the easiest for an outside to join unsuspected. Six, Seven, and Eight. His number begins with a five, one less than six. Five-one-six. Six, Seven, Eight.

That's all Radia's life is. All his life has ever been.

But the glow of the nightlight doesn't reach all corners of the room. It casts dark shadows that look like they're running away.

Radia would run. Through the Capitol streets, guided by the circular glow of the streetlamps, following straight roads lined with synthetic trees. Barefooted, clothed in only a nightgown, he would run and run until he reached the wilderness. Until he reached the fireflies.

The patterns outside don't make his head hurt nearly so much.

And the patterns, oh, the patterns and the past two years. Zephyr sets burning eyes on Radia, when he bothers to look at all. Everything is artificial here, but then, everything was artificial at home.

Here, Radia is part of the sky. But Radia is artificial, too. And silence isn't sacred when the light is on, and Radia is crying. His sobs mean nothing. Nothing. But the sensation is oddly pleasant, the contrast of the warm tears catching in the bags under his eyes against the cool air that fills the room.

In the other room, the one that Zephyr and Felix share, Felix gives a loud snore. It coves the opening of the door, silent like a panther, and the sound of Zephyr's footsteps, his feet sticking to the floor as he walks down the hall.

The door to Radia's room opens inward, and darkness spills in. Zephyr's face is neutral, but his eyes look like a fever. Worried, maybe, the way they used to look before the officials took a liking to Radia; or bitter, labored with obligation. He says nothing, watches Radia with a sophisticated silence. The same way he used to regard Radia when he tried to catch the fireflies. Radia makes a point of positioning himself so that he can't see Zephyr.

Zephyr brings a claustrophobia to Radia that even the tears can never, never wash away.

But Zephyr's impassive lips twitch upward, and the fever in his eyes breaks. "Stay here tomorrow. I'll cover for you at work."

Radia turns, and the claustrophobia doesn't matter. Hiccupping, trying to control the shaking of his chest and his shoulders, he makes eye contact with his brother for the first time in months.

And for just a moment, Zephyr's eyes look like fireflies.


	5. Introducing the Outcast

Chapter Five: The Outcast Is Much Younger and Much More Determined Than Kayla – and even J – Gave Him Credit For

Also, J seems to teeter, reel, and stumble a lot.

…..

Rated T for descriptions of Oliver's condition, in particular his eye.

…..

Above the ridge lies a forest. The hardness never leaves his face completely, but J gazes around with wide eyes at the thin white trunks of the trees. At the bright green of the leaves, the strange sort of translucency about them. And the flowers, oh, the flowers bloom in lonely clusters of vibrant purples and oranges.

J revels in it. He revels in the tickling sensations of the wind blowing in curves around the trees, in the warmth he feels even in the shadows, in the scent of the flowers, so overwhelmingly strong that it blocks out anything he's ever smelled before. He breathes deeply, with his nose and his mouth, purging himself of the stiffness and the stillness that filled District Eight. The infirmary where his sister worked, the world just a few short feet behind him. Cleansing himself of the traces of blood that coat his throat, his lungs, his heart.

There is no awe. There is only the freedom that accompanies being beyond rules and beyond pain. J's feet are clumsy as he makes his way through the woods. His hands stretch out to run along the roughness and smoothness of the tree trunks. Enticing, yes. But there is no awe.

He stumbles. He trips over anything below his knees. But the trees are there to catch him, and to help him up when he does fall.

They don't say a word.

They are much better friends than Fred or Grako ever were.

J finds himself stumbling faster. The trees are there to stable him, but when he reaches out again, he pauses. From somewhere far to his right, he hears a gurgling sound, like children laughing. And, more immediately, a moan, much like the sound of the wind, but with a little more voice.

The trees here are several inches thicker, large enough to hide behind if he were a coward.

But J is no coward. For in this new freedom, J is untouchable.

Sure he's alone. He's not a mile out of Eight. Even without the electricity, the barbs in the fence scare everyone away. And no one can survive long in the wild, even when that wild is as pleasant as this one is. The Hunger Games are proof enough of that.

And address number 496. The scrapbook. That burning, boiling sensation J felt when he was looking at it.

That was Grako's building.

Teetering slightly, J stares at a point of blue sky. The trees are better friends than Fred and Grako. The trees are better friends than the passed twelve-year-old who had the nerve to leave the district. The twelve-year-old who crawled around underneath the machines in the factory where he used to work, and once tried to get inside of them. The twelve-year-old whose eyes J could never see into.

J takes a slow, deep breath, shaking his shoulders to rid himself of the feelings of doom.

…..

He finds the stream shortly after. He follows it, just far enough away that he can only see it occasionally through the trees. For the water, although only a few inches deep, reminds J of a looking glass; the reflective surface hides a murky darkness.

And the rushing of the water almost drowns out the wailing.

J comes upon the boy quite suddenly. His irregular voice seems like just another part of the stream to J. But there's a leg and an arm, clothed in tattered scrap material, and a glint of something long and smooth. J reels back again; it's a surgical knife, like the one his sister, with her deft, unemotional hands, wiped free of blood and handed to him; and demonstrated on a real patient, just when J's eyelids were plastered so wide open, paralyzed, that he thought he might never blink again.

The very next day, J was assigned to assist with a surgery that was really nothing more than a fancy name for cutting people open and peering at their guts. Like they were telling fortunes and seeing into the future.

But the boy screams, and before J knows it, he's crashing through the scenery, teetering at water's edge, crouching and peering down.

This boy has a slight figure, huddled up against the tree trunk not five feet from the stream like it's a lifeline. His right hand holds the kitchen knife, not a surgical knife. It shakes toward and away from his face. The blade is coated in waterfalls of a dark liquid and small chunks of a muddy substance, both slimy and squishy. It travels, slug like, down the length of the blade, but the boy doesn't seem to care.

For his left hand, bruised in shades of purple, green, and yellow, the fingers bent out of place, skin stretched far too tightly over every ligament, is what makes J's stomach churn. J clenches his teeth. All he knows is that he has to fix this boy.

J carefully places one of his own two healthy, functional hands on the boy's shoulder. The boy starts so wildly that the kitchen knife swings toward his head. J inhales sharply, and the boy begins to shake. He drops the knife, which lands beside a small bag, and clutches his head.

J nods deftly. For such a wreck, the boy has good reflexes.

"Can I see your hand?"

The boy groans, and presses his left hand harder against his face. "No." His voice is shaky at best, barely even a whisper.

"Give me your hand." J's voice goes flat. The pressure of his own hand on the boy's shoulder increases, and the boy squirms. But he manages a half-hearted laugh, something in between that and a wail.

"You're not going to ask me who I am?"

"Who you are doesn't matter. If you were a mass murderer, I'd still try to help you."

"Well, don't fix my hand." He has spunk; J has to give him that. "Fix my _eye_." He gently eases his mangled hand away from his left eye. J takes the hand and holds it at the wrist.

But the boy's eye, oh, the boy's eye is worse than anything J has ever seen. If he had his sister's medic's gut, he could stare at it without feeling; diagnosing and running through everything he needs to do to fix it. But J's mind goes blank. Because the skin around the eye is pulled away, coated in a layer of sweat and blood, and chunks of soft muscle tissue. Infected yellow tissue and pus rings his eye, spreading across it. The eye sags, a large chunk torn out of the upper corner, and blood oozes, flows, rages from grooves and gouges, dips and mountains. It's raw, ragged, and as J stares, his mind makes the connection. The lumpy, deformed mass in this eye socket, and the slug like substance on the knife.

J can see part of the pupil, trapped within a brilliant green. It's alive. And it's screaming.

"Can you fix it?"

J takes the hand and, with one finger, gently pats at the skin around the boy's eye. The boy wails.

"Maybe. Look. You were trying to cut it out, right?"

"Of course. I can't see anymore. I _had_ to go."

"This is some mighty infection you have."

The boy's face falls into a scowl. "You're no use. Fix it! _Fix it_."

Carefully, carefully, J feels around the eye. He boy, wincing, shaking, tries to draw away, but he's backed up against the tree.

And, carefully, J chooses his words. "I don't know if I can. That looks like a killer."

The boy gulps. "A killer?"

J puts his foot in his mouth. "Look, I don't know. Tell me about it. Your symptoms. When it started. Is it internal?"

"It hurts."

"Yes. Where. Where does it hurt?"

"Everywhere. It hurts all over. My skin. It's like it's inside my brain."

"Inside… your brain?" J's breath leaves him.

"Mmhmm. All inside my eye and up into my brain." His voice has none of the cockiness it had before, just the whimper of a child.

Killer, J thinks, but he says nothing. His eyes dart around, searching for the familiar 'tools of the trade'; bandages, herbal remedies, coloured pills that had a diversity much greater than all of District Eight.

"I need to see." He reaches across the boy, his fingers close around the handle of the kitchen knife, and, deftly, the way he's used to seeing others do, wipes it clean on the hem of his shirt. He holds it up to examine. The blade is permanently stained, one side serrated. He shakes his head, sighing. "Well, no wonder you're in such a bad condition."

The boy looks at J with his right eye. "I know. It's serrated. I'd have a clean cut if I could use my left hand." The broken fingers on his left hand twitch, bulging in unnatural places and falling limply back to the ground.

"I…have experience," J mutters. Holding the knife, steadily, shakily, he places the fingers of his other hand on the skin around the boy's eye. And, with utmost care, J inserts the knife into the space between the eyelid and the sagging eye, and lifts upward.

It's dark behind the eye, and there's a gap, as if it weren't connected right. J tugs a little more.

The smell is far greater than the smell of the flowers – but then, good things never do last. It's far greater than the sum of all its parts, behind that eye.

And the boy begins to shake, as hard as a thunderstorm. His fingers seek the stability that J's body brings, the comfort of not being alone.

J draws the knife back, shaking himself. It's once again covered in blood, at least at the tip, but he seems to have gotten a clean cut.

"See?" the boy says. "In my brain."

J nods. But in truth, he didn't see anything. There was only blackness and the wetness of the eye and severed tendons dangling free-form. And the infection. Lumps of disfigured muscle tissue oozing pus throughout the eye socket. J broke it loose, and as he wipes the blade clean again, he sees it dripping out from underneath, catching in the waves of skin below.

He can't do it. Not this. He can't save this boy. He can't slap some mixture over the eye, tie a bandage around the boy's head, and say he'll be all right. And he can't cut out the eye.

"I know a real medic."

The boy says nothing. The stream cries by. It's less of a looking glass here; every now and then, shards of the riverbed show through. That's where the boy stares with only his right eye. "Great. Now give me the knife." His voice, too, has a flatness about it.

"To let you cut out your eye."

"Yes." He turns toward J, staring right at him with his dead eye, through a pupil that sees nothing but pain.

J frowns, glancing from the boy to the knife. "No. Get used to it."

"Speaking of," the boy continues, "I know why I'm here, but what about you?"

J's frown deepens. "No reason."

"Ah. You're a runaway, aren't you?"

"I suppose. I'm gonna go back when I cool off, all right?"

The boy shrinks back from the harsh edge in his voice. He speaks in a whisper. "Well… I'm an outcast."

"Look, I get it. If you need the eye out so much, I'll do it."

The boy manages a smile – it's more of a grimace, really, but the intent behind it is clear. "And, you know, you can call me Oliver."


	6. Introducing the Rebel

Pond: Yeah, it took a really long time to write this. And I can no longer type. And it's eleven thirty pm here. So forgive the spelling and punctuation errors. Because I need to meet my deadline. And I don't have time to proofread. Introducing someone I really need to introduce. Also, a note. The names Z and X are placeholders. It takes a ridiculous amount of time for me to choose a name. J, on the other hand, is actually what he goes by.

...

Chapter Six: Introducing the Rebel  
>Considering what he did, the Gamemakers will make the rebel's life in the arena hell.<p>

...

"I dare you to kiss him," one of them says. His voice is flat. Even in the darkness of the library long after sundown, where no one could put a voice to a face, emotion has no place in the game.

"I decline." Acacia sits atop a table, regal enough to be a queen. She yawns, jaws cracking, and drums her fingers on the tabletop.

"I dare you to kiss _her_," another tries.

"I decline."

Z leans forward. "I dare you to volunteer at the reaping in a week."

"I decline."

"Then I dare you," X hisses from the corner, where he sits in self-imposed solitude, where the light from the window only touches the tips of his shows, "to rig the reaping."

Acacia cracks a crooked grin, the whites of her eyes feral in the dim light. "Now, that I can do."

And the gaze she sends in X's direction screams a warning to run for his life.

...

On the day of the reaping, Acacia doesn't once make eye contact with X, who stands, huddled and hunched over, in the corner of the sixteens. She keeps her gaze away from anyone who witnessed the dare.

X's eyes flash darkness when Z crosses the seventeens section and puts a hand on his shoulders, but he doesn't shrink away. He just shivers shivers, so much the goose bumps on his arms feel like mountains and Z's teeth are chattering from mere contact with X's skin. X's eyes lock on a point just below Z's. The shadows under X's are unbearable to wincing, his eyes closed.

But Acacia isn't looking at him. She's looking at Z.

"I…" X says, just a child's voice and just a whisper. He gazes on and on, unblinking, unmoving. His eyes are using Z's face for nothing but to keep himself grounded.

He is so small, shorter than Z, shorter than Kue, shorter than Acacia. Carefully, carefully, as not to frighten him, Z begins to massage the frozen muscles around the bones of his shoulders.

"I dare you to rig the reapings," X says. Mocking himself. His voice is a quavering note like the ones the musician who sits in the square five days a week plays on his violin.

"You're terrified," Z observes. X drags his gaze away from Z's face. Even across the ropes that mark off the seventeens, Z gently kneads the creases in his neck and shoulders.

"You'd do well to turn around," Z says. X does, and he's no longer facing the stage. But the mayor is reading the Treaty of Treason, even if they both tune it out. Closer, closer creeps the choosing of the tributes.

Z doesn't glance back once. He closes his eyes to put Acacia's stare, full of malice, out of his mind. To forget about the reaping and the library after hours. He lets his hands do the work, threading the tension out of X's back and leaving trails of sweat behind. For while X is frozen, even as the goose bumps fade from his skin, Z is burning.

"Is it wrong?" Z asks.  
>"What?"<p>

"That I love… you and Acacia and M."

The escort stands, wooden heals like keys turning in locks as he crosses to the reaping balls. Z can forget all that, he thinks.

X is skeptical. "Why do I care?"

"She followed through with that dare. You're going into the Games."

"I know." But a shudder runs through his body. He isn't at all prepared.

"I think…" Z thinks he wouldn't like to sleep with any of them, but they're more than just friends.

The escort isn't traditional. He reaches his left hand into the boy's ball. Without dramatics, as plain as his wooden heels, he pulls the name and unfolds it.

X doesn't twitch his head toward the stage. He reaches up and takes Z's hands from his shoulders and places them over his ears. "It's wrong," he says.

The escort reads the name. And X freezes.

Wrong. That Z can find three people, more, to love when everyone around him has eyes for only one. That he, who only gives thirty-three percent to anything he does, has the right love.

X is shaking. Z feels it vaguely through hands held over Z's ears. X struggles to turn around.

His eyes are as dark as stars. Dark as the sun. Dark as the shadows he resides in.

"You," X says.

Z can only stare at his face, so timid in public, so beautiful at home in the shadows where the little light makes him look like a monster. "Keep a stiff upper lip, now. We don't want you crying."

"But you…"

The escort taps his foot. The click of the wooden heel is impatient. "Get your lousy buttocks up here, Z Amaranthus."

Everything is wrong. The tears gathering in the corners of X's eyes. The half-choked shout from Acacia, her burning stare from earlier. The way his name is hollow, as hollow as when X says, "Z," despairing.

It's not him. It's not real.

Wrong that he will give thirty-three percent, because he won't. He will give his all.

But he turns stiffly toward the escort, whose eyes scan the crowd with an unsettling resemblance to the wooden heels. He pulls his hand, laden with sweat, from X's skull. The crowd is unyielding, the seventeens with their angry shoves as he roughly pushes them aside with his elbows.

He ducks below the rope barrier. The stage isn't that far, now. A few paces at most. But he's burning up, even as the sun finds refuge behind a thick cloud, even as X, somewhere far behind him, is covered in goose bumps.

He staggers toward the stage, past hostile eighteens who have already heaved their sighs of relief.

Behind him, a child laughs. A wispy sound. But there's a sudden flutter of motion behind him, and gruff complaints from the seventeens. Then two hands clasp around his left arm. Halfway up the steps, Z turns around. X stares up at him, more fragile and feeble than Z has ever seen him. Tears weigh down his face, and he begins to shake.

Sobbing.

No, that isn't quite right. X's face looks so different when his eyes aren't cast toward the floor, when his features aren't swallowed by darkness. But the contours of his face aren't crying.

They're laughing.

Z's heartbeat falters. Something within him flickers out, and he's not burning anymore. He's lukewarm.

X clasps Z's left hand in his own, his eyes holding Z's. Z can't move.

And yet somehow, Z manages to lift his other hand and, with all the lukewarm force he can muster, slaps X across the face. In a shock of pain, X's hands loosen.

Confident – no longer shaking or staggering – Z raises his head and climbs the stage. He turns to face the crowd, a fraction of District Eleven. They, with their laughing children and thick shields erected around themselves, they don't have his trust.

And he won't have theirs.

He finds Acacia, far away in the sixteens. She's grinning. A wild grin, and a genuine smile.

Head high, bare feet stepping with a fraction of the sound made by the escort's heels, Z storms across the stage. Past the boy's ball, past the pedestal. He keeps his eyes away from X and away from Acacia. He plunges his hand into the girl's ball, reaching for some name, any name. It doesn't matter.

The District holds its breath. X's hiccupping laughter catches. The escort is frozen in place.

Z unfolds the slip, smoothing it in his hands. He barely glances at the name. It doesn't matter.

The sun slips out from behind the cloud. Blinking, blinded, Z keeps his chin raised, staring out across the square. Z holds the strip up to the sun. With a voice neither confident nor lukewarm but cold, as cold as shooting stars, Z speaks her name.

"Acacia Korrim."

The breath is released. Acacia's face is so full of hate that Z can barely recognize her. She stalks up to the slaves.

But the Peacekeepers turn their loaded guns on him. Beautiful weapons that he will never touch.

"Well?" he says, a challenge in his voice. "Shoot me."

The wind picks up. Z doesn't look at them – not one of them. He doesn't need to. They don't shoot.

For in this moment, he is larger than the world.


	7. Spring

Pond: All right-y. Very short chapter, although I started Acacia's next chapter. I'd have had this up on Friday, but I forgot the tiny little detail that my family was taking me right to a camping trip without internet after school let out. So no. I didn't. Then I felt ill, so I sat around and read _Good Omens_ again the whole weekend. I'm still not sure what's up with my style here, but I think it's some weird combination between my Wayposts character form voice and the voice for WriMo last November. But I hate it. And yes, Poison should be up by now, but I'm not actually sure if Tom's going to rewrite it or not.

…..

Chapter Seven: Where Nothing Much Happens - Except Much-Needed Character Development.

Also, apparently dogwood trees grow in Three.

…..

The reapings were conveniently on a Thursday. Squat in the middle of the school week, where there were two more busy days until Sunday to keep Zoranne distracted – as if he could be – and two more weary days to trudge through with his heart dragging as low as his shoelaces.

Zoranne doesn't go to school on Friday. There will be people who may or may not know his relationship with Etora offering him tissues and helping hands and hastily scrawled cheat sheets, but the cons outweigh the pros. School is hell, good for nothing but making him miserable when he wants nothing more than something resembling stability.

Zoranne is frazzled, up at the crack of dawn. Trailing the blankets from the couch behind him. A funeral procession in his own right, across the small patch of grass to Echlyss' house nest door, past the dogwood tree in the front yard.

Stupid dogwood. Has the nerve to be blooming already. Little pink flower buds, little green leaves, ones that blow in the shop's open window in the summer. The nerve to be so bright.

The nerve to stand by Echlyss. Not Zoranne.

Zoranne lets himself in through the front door. The little bells chime a familiar note.

Etora's family is clockmakers. The workshop's around to the back, out of sight from the street. The main shop barely has any wall space left, because both Etora and Echlyss spend too much time tinkering with all the new pieces. Even if the materials are expensive – so expensive Zoranne ends up applying metallic spray paint to odd creations half of the times he comes over, because half the time they only have money for second-hand parts – nothing stops them.

Etora has a corner of the shop all to his own. Extravagant, lit with red-draped lamps, bands of coloured cloth hung from hooks in the ceiling. Cozy, certainly. Etora's naturally gifted. Clocks, strictly. So much more beautiful than the shabby one Zoranne made after weeks of trial and error. At least it ticked.

But there's Echlyss, feet propped up on the counter, laid back in the chair with his face toward the heavens. Toward the open window that dogwood petals blow through in the summer. Running the shop while his mother is off to drink away her grief.

Echlyss would drink, too, but for Zoranne.

"Hey," he says. Like nothing's happened. Like he's just ready to hug Zoranne, and get up to make him a cup of hot cocoa to make him feel better. To call up Zoranne's school with the shop telephone to excuse his tardiness.

The sort of thing Zoranne wishes he could have done for Etora.

But Echlyss means none of those things. His eyes dart away from Zoranne's face quickly, and his voice is flat. He'd been giving them cold eyes for a month, Zoranne and Etora. He had work, always.

He means go away. Go way fast, get out of my sight, don't bother me until Monday or I swear I'm going to throw something at you.

Zoranne locks his gaze on the stupid, stupid dogwood out the window. "Hey," he says back. He knows well enough from all the time he's spent at the clockmaker's that the way Echlyss rolls his right shoulder makes it obvious that Zoranne's face is going to swiftly become a target for flying missiles.

Predictably, it is. Echlyss pulls the little plastic clock face form the work table beside the counter – which is probably there so Echlyss and his mother can work during hours, and so they could keep an eye on Etora - he pulls it at a speed any regular person could match. But his arm is strong. His aim is true.

It's going to bruise. Zoranne knows that as son as the plastic hits his left cheek.

It stings. Echlyss used a ridiculous amount of force for being only ten feet away. Stupid Echlyss. Sits with all the mind of a carved statue. Looks Zoranne right in the eye. Another way and he's as coward. Running away. Won't back down, won't hold back, won't be the weak one. Won't be the lonely one – he's the dogwood, the clocks Etora made, the neighborhood children, whizzing down the street on brightly painted scooters, peering into the clockmaker's shop windows.

He won't be the one left behind, not if there's any way to move on. Not going to drink away his grief, for Zoranne, for Etora, for the future. Underage, anyway.

Echlyss slumps back in the chair. He's old enough to move out, now, if he wanted to. Old enough to move to another part of Three so far away even clock making is primitive. And Etora's old enough to prepare to take over the shop. Fourteen and naturally talented. Blessed with good luck.

Somebody else's back luck brought them here.

Echlyss would do it, move away, but for his mother. And now, for Etora.

Zoranne's got to have a tough skin to live by the Tictervelks. Got to not mind the sights of very large bruises. So it's the shock. The shock that Echlyss would actually throw something at him the day after Etora's death warrant, when Zoranne came over seeking solace. That's what makes his eyes mist up.

Any educated individual could tell you that the sun is made of gas and is over a hundred times larger than the earth. If Etora means the world to Echlyss, if he's as bright as stars to the rest of Three, well, he's the sun to Zoranne.

"Do you need a moment?" Echlyss says quietly.

"Please don't." Zoranne presses one hand on the desk, holding the other to his face. Not shaking, but struggling to swallow. Struggling to breathe.

Echlyss stands. "I'm sure you don't want me to see you cry."

He's so cold, Zoranne thinks, and how can he be that way? How dare he? Stupid, stupid Echlyss.

He doesn't pass Zoranne. He heads toward the back door; outside, there's a set of steps up to the porch ringing the building's second level, the Tictervelks' residence. He needs the solitude, more than Zoranne.

Echlyss once told him, "If you need anyone to keep a secret, I'll be here." Zoranne once took him up on that, but now, Echlyss isn't worth his time, much less his secrets. Not with Etora.

Now Etora is gone.

But I'm still here, Echlyss thinks. He doesn't dare say it out loud.


End file.
